Techaisle’s study on SMB Collaboration Solutions Adoption Trends shows that for 59 percent of US small businesses and 93 percent of US midmarket businesses, collaboration is among the Top 5 IT priorities for investments. In Asia/Pacific, 63 percent of SMBs are turning towards it as a business growth driver and in Western Europe, 68 percent of SMBs are finding that collaboration drives better teamwork and customer responsiveness.
Overall 38 percent of US SMBs are currently using one or more collaboration solutions and another 20 percent are planning to use one within the next year, a growth of 52 percent. Overwhelmingly, SMB customers view online file sharing as the most important aspect of a collaboration solution as 64 percent of SMBs using collaboration are currently using online file sharing (24 percent of all US SMBs) and another 32 percent are planning to use it within the next one year.
The survey data also shows that the next stage in the SMB collaboration adoption is their need for online interaction, that is, simultaneously share and edits files from PCs and mobile devices, mobile video collaboration, integration with social networks, and richer media escalations, such as using chat, text, voice, video at the same time.
As per the study, key business drivers for SMB collaboration adoption are also changing. While currently there is a strong desire to build robust content repositories, the next wave of SMB collaboration adopters are emphasizing speed of innovation, demands for improved productivity, and imperatives for faster time to market.
In terms of brand solution adoption, the SMB market is quite fragmented with Google, Microsoft, and Cisco leading, but there are many other smaller collaboration solution brands that are being used extensively by SMBs. Further analysis of data also underscores the importance and use of collaborative capabilities within SaaS applications such as CRM, ERP, accounting, project management, HR management, business intelligence and content publishing.
With respect to file sharing, Dropbox has had a very strong impact on the SMB collaboration solutions market. By enabling mobile users to share files freely, they at once underscored the central importance of mobility, enabled individual users to be drivers of corporate collaboration activity, and proved the centricity of file-first rather than person-first collaboration models.
Box (another important vendor in the space), on the other hand has gone on record saying that SMBs are not its target market segment. There is a market opportunity for traditional backup and file-sharing IT companies such as Hightail, Carbonite, Egnyte as well as those delivering mobile workspaces such as Citrix and managed services platform providers such as Continuum and security IT vendors such as Trend Micro. However, the reach for each of these will be limited to the reach of their respective SMB focused channel partners.
Techaisle believes that there are additional file-centric developments that will further shape the nature of SMB file sharing solutions in the years to come. Today, most files are intrinsically connected to the applications that created them. If cloud and mobility are the key determinants of IT delivery, then there would be a need for the decoupling of data from applications. Application-independent data wrapped in rich metadata would allow new cloud-based applications (potentially based on BI platforms) to combine existing data to meet new business requirements. In addition, freed of originating applications, it is also likely that data could be optimally formatted for a wide range of displays: large screen PCs, smaller screen smartphones and tablets, and new display types ranging from signage to digital paper to wearable heads-up displays.
For more details on the report, click SMB and Midmarket Collaboration Adoption Trends
Techaisle Analyst Insights
Key success metrics for collaboration systems center on speed of response to customers/prospects and business decision timeliness and accuracy.
Techaisle’s global SMB survey results show that 42 percent of SMBs assess the success of collaboration solution initiatives in terms of improved speed of response to customers and prospects. In the SMB survey Techaisle asked respondents “which metrics does your organization use to measure the business benefits of collaboration technologies?” Small and midmarket business responses to the question show that the success of collaboration systems is primarily gauged by improvements in response time to customers or prospects. However, this is where the similarity between small and midmarket businesses’ measurement of key success metrics for collaboration solutions stops.
Small business View
Apart of speed of response, 36 percent of small businesses report that conversation views, comments and topics are used to evaluate collaboration solution success; Techaisle believes that while this makes sense from a couple of perspectives (it provides an indication of system use/adoption, and metrics can be easily collected and compared), it does not make sense from an important standpoint of “does this metric measure an important business outcome?”
Techaisle believes that counting conversation views, comments and topics is a relatively weak success metric for collaboration systems, one that will gradually give way to measurements, like decision timeliness, that are tightly coupled with key business outcomes. Somewhat surprisingly, internal response times, that is, speed of response to employees, is also an important measurement criterion for small businesses with 20-99 employees.
Midmarket View
Decision accuracy, a key evaluation criterion, is rated as the second most important collaboration solution success metric by 43 percent of midmarket businesses and the third-most important by small business respondents. Midmarket businesses are also focused on decision timeliness, which strikes Techaisle as a reasonable measure of collaboration success.
Further analysis of the midmarket data shows that speed of customer/prospect response is more firmly positioned than small businesses as the key determinant of solution success. Survey data also shows that midmarket businesses with 100-249 employees also view a reduction in the cost of collaboration as a key success metrics. This is interesting because it is the only employee size segment to include cost among the top three measures of collaboration solution success.
Techaisle Take
It is always difficult to measure the impact of technology, especially when that technology has a broad purpose, rather than a narrowly-defined technical objective. One can measure the impact of a faster processor, network or database in response time, even if one is uncertain of how to assess the business relevance of better response time. But what is the best way to evaluate the success of collaboration solutions that are deployed to create corporate information repositories, to connect geographically-dispersed staff, to improve innovation or teamwork, to overcome constraints on decision speed, and/or to address corporate mandates?
Techaisle believes that the survey findings, reported in 360 on SMB Collaboration Solutions Adoption Trends contain important messages for collaboration solution providers. Marketing material aimed at SMB business management should emphasize, in clear and measurable terms, how investment in a solution will improve the timeliness of responses to customers and prospects. The messaging should also include information (again, in clear and preferably measurable terms) on how a solution can enable better decision timeliness. And while cost is always important, survey data indicates that reduction in the cost of collaboration should not be a central facet of solution positioning. Instead, suppliers are urged to look for ways (via case studies, perhaps) to illustrate how better collaboration solutions leads to more accurate business decisions.
Related blogs:
34 percent SMBs want out-of-box Collaboration within SaaS/Cloud applications
SMB and Midmarket File Sharing & Collaboration Adoption to Grow by 52 percent
SMB Content Management & Collaboration Solutions Adoption: Seven Key Trends
This is the second in a series of BI-related posts and it deals with what platforms are being selected and what objectives are being served with SMB Business Intelligence customers. Despite a much shorter history than packaged BI, our survey found a higher level of Cloud-based than packaged BI applications within the SMB respondent base. You may want to open it up to full size as the charts are a little crowded.
The arguments for cloud are clear, and well-aligned with the specific interests of small and mid-market businesses, and ITDMs and BDMs. However, despite what appears to be a 24x7 stream of cloud information available to everyone with an internet connection, cloud is not ubiquitous – meaning that there are objections that prevent cloud from being introduced in some SMB environments.
To better understand cloud objections, Techaisle’s SMB Cloud Computing Adoption survey asked respondents “What are the key inhibitors to embracing cloud – what factors might prevent you from adopting new cloud solutions, and/or accelerating the use of current cloud solutions?”
Responses show that the traditional cloud bugbears of security and control continue to furnish obstacles to increased cloud penetration/acceleration. As the figure illustrates, SMBs are most worried about security of applications and corporate data, and about control over data, users and applications.
Mid-market businesses also register a high rate of concern regarding the difficulty of integrating operational systems across hybrid traditional/cloud-based systems – and objection which, in Techaisle’s opinion, has real merit and will require attention (and solutions) from the cloud supplier community. This issue is of particular concern to firms with 100-249 employees – large enough to have diverse systems requiring integration, but not large enough to have deep IT resources capable of addressing the problem. We expect that this concern will spread both to larger firms as they move more workloads from on-premise to cloud or hybrid platforms, and to smaller firms as they adopt more SaaS systems (requiring cloud-to-cloud integration).
A drill down into inhibitors by employee size segment shows that the smallest organizations in both the small and mid-markets – the 1-9 employee micro-businesses, and the 100-249 medium businesses – have some unique issues. Micro-businesses worry about vendor lock-in – a reasonable concern, as these firms have neither the technical expertise nor the purchasing power to extricate themselves from supplier relationships if they experience difficulties. The 100-249 employee size groups, as detailed above, are worried about integration. Consistently, though, SMBs are concerned with questions of security and data/user/application control. Suppliers able to address these issues will benefit from expanded market opportunity.
Looking at this issue through the ITDM/BDM lens, we see that the principal objections – with one important exception – are defined by the roles that each group plays within their organizations. BDMs, as might be expected, are very concerned with control over business data (can we access and manage data in the cloud as well as we can on premise?), with connectivity (can we get to information and applications when we are on the road?), and with vendor lock-in (which can be seen as an extension of the data control issue). ITDMs, on the other hand, are more concerned with technical issues than their BDM peers: they are more likely to cite limitations in service access and integration issues as cloud impediments.
The one area where the pattern does not correspond to expectations is in security, where BDMs express higher levels of concern than ITDMs. Given that ITDMs are responsible for most aspects of cloud security, we would have anticipated more security-related concern from ITDMs, if not necessarily lower rates of security-related worry on the part of the BDM respondents.
